Means & Ends in Education. Comments on Living and Learning. Occasional Papers 2.

Crittenden, Brian, Ed.

This collection of 10 working papers is designed to contribute to analysis of issues and appraisal of recommendations in "Learning and Living: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario," the 1968 "Hall-Dennis report" commissioned to develop aims and objectives and to propose means by which they might be achieved. An introduction points up themes and issues in the papers, each by an educator at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The first six, which view the report as a whole, are (1) a comparison of Hall-Dennis with the 1950 Hope Commission report, (2) a critique of the report's style of argument: its use of slogans, (3) a discussion of the need for more explicit objectives more useful in the evaluation of learning, (4) an argument that the Hall-Dennis aims are not stated as ends and thus are not attainable by the process of schooling, (5) a sociologist's exploration of the means of developing and applying Hall-Dennis principles through "participatory education", and (6) an analysis praising the report's vision but criticizing its proposed means. Others concentrate on particular sections or topics discussing (1) implications for education evaluation; (2) evidence that bears on the education of handicapped children; (3) the concept of modeling, learning by imitation, and its application to Hall-Dennis themes, and (4) the financial cost of implementation. (JS)